Performances

Tune of the Day: The Parting Glass

Traditional Irish/Scottish song

This Irish or Scottish traditional song is often sung at the end of a gathering of friends. It was allegedly the most popular song sung in both Scotland and Ireland before Robert Burns wrote “Auld Lang Syne”.

The song was printed as a broadside in the 1770s, and first appeared in book form in Scots Songs by Herd. An early version of the song is sometimes attributed to Sir Alex Boswell.
The song is doubtlessly older than its 1770 appearance in broadside, as it was recorded in the Skene Manuscript, a collection of Scottish airs written at various dates between 1615 and 1635. It was known at least as early as 1605, when a portion of the first stanza was written in a farewell letter, as a poem now known as “Armstrong's Goodnight”, by one of the raiders executed that year for the murder of the Warden of the Scottish West March.